


Sakumo's Son's Sibling

by calderaNightOwl



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Family Feels, Hatake Clan-centric, Hatake Sakumo Lives, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kakashi's mother gets as much attention in this as she got in canon: about none, Minor Character Death, Pre-Canon, Reincarnation, Second Shinobi War, Self-Insert, Third Shinobi War, Unplanned Pregnancy, Young Hatake Kakashi, be prepared for canon to crash burn and break
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:48:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26764579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calderaNightOwl/pseuds/calderaNightOwl
Summary: I was too used to western medicine. It’s not any excuse. But, come on! How well would you fare if condoms, the pill, and IUDs all got replaced by magical glowy hands? I’d had a hard enough time understanding doctor-speak in my last life. Deciphering medic-nin babble was a lost cause.I’ll blame the jutsu-jargon and the fact that Sakumo was a hot DILF for me accidentally giving Kakashi a younger sibling.My baby ended up changing things a lot more than I anticipated.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Hatake Sakumo, Hatake Kakashi & Original Character(s), Hatake Sakumo & Original Character(s), Hatake Sakumo/Original Female Character(s), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 52
Kudos: 421





	1. Chapter 1

If any of you ask me how this bun in the oven came to be, I’ll not-so politely redirect you to the birds and the bees. Or, as the shinobi like to call it, the flowers and the pollinators. I always rolled my eyes fondly at my Aburame friends when they said it like that. So accurate. So factual.

Anyways, there was a girl (that’s me) and a boy (that’s Sakumo), in a dimly lit bar that smelled a bit too much like sweat from ninja fresh off the training grounds.

It was a shinobi hangout. I’d failed out of the Academy years ago after flunking the genin test three times (chakra, man, its way harder than you think). So, I probably shouldn’t have been in there, considering I had reverted to civilian status. But I was still friends with those who did make it to genin and beyond. It was nice they hadn’t dropped me when I wasn’t as successful as them at the whole shinobi thing.

I’d most likely dodged a bullet (kunai?) anyways, by not becoming a full-fledged kunoichi. We were at peace. I’d somehow managed to be born and grow up in a relatively war-free chunk of Konoha history. Actively engaging in life-threatening missions when I could just as easily be back at home relaxing in the village probably wasn’t the smartest. I had to try it though. Being a ninja, going to the Academy. It didn’t work out, and I knew war was on the horizon, but, at least for my childhood and young adult years, I was safe.

If I’d had to pick any time period to be reborn into, this time period was up there in my choices. No stress about messing with ‘canon characters’ because we were pre-series. The only people I really had to avoid in order to ease my anxiety about ‘changing things’ were the Sannin. And they were pretty much so far removed from my personal sphere of acquaintances they might as well have been on another continent.

I knocked back a shot with the kind of energy that ought to have made me jump up and yell ‘YOLO’ before attempting a drunken handstand on the table. But, well, ‘YOLT’ (you only live twice) didn’t really have the same ring to it. And since discontinuing my shinobi training, I was unsure about my ability to hold the handstand without tipping off the table onto my ass.

My best friend, Chie, nudged me.

“Look, it’s the White Fang!” She hissed.

I jerked my head a little too fast, and the room went spinning.

His silver hair stuck out in the crowd, so it was easy to spot him. I’d never seen him here before. I’d never seen him before in this lifetime, period.

He was kind of famous, in the same way the Sannin were. Shit. Was he older or younger than them? I couldn’t remember.

It was hard to guess his age based on appearance too, since his hair was already grey.

He was a total DILF, whether or not Kakashi had been born yet. The date system around these parts didn’t exactly go by ‘two years until Kakashi is born’ descriptions in order for me to know one way or the other.

“Well? Are you going to go talk to him?” Chie said, and I realized I’d been staring at him, practically drooling. Chie knew me too well. At this point, I’d usually be all over a tall drink of water like him. The only thing that was stopping me was that he was _the_ Hatake Sakumo. Could I really just go up and talk to him?

“You are not freezing up on me now.” Chie continued her impromptu pep talk. She liked to live vicariously through me. She was a bit more reserved. I was not. She valued stability over flings. I realized how close death really was and made the most of every day.

Something about dying and being reborn in a fictional universe had knocked loose a lot of my inhibitions. I had been a lot like Chie in my last life. I understood her. I think that’s why we’re such great friends.

“What should I say?” I might have next to zero inhibitions, but that didn’t mean I had _game_.

“It doesn’t matter what you say! You’re gorgeous!” Chie huffed impatiently, “He’ll take one look at you and fall head over heels.”

“I don’t need him to fall head over heels. I just need to get in his pants.”

“And then tell me all about it.” Chie hastened to add.

I shot her a look. “Of course.” I said in a ‘duh’ kind of tone.

“Then what are you waiting for?” Chie said, and I swear she brings out the worst in me with her enabling tendencies.

“I’m going. I’m going.” I held my hands out to steady myself as I got up from my seat.

You’d think Chie was into Sakumo after hearing that, right? Well, I had nothing to worry about there. Chie was in a sickeningly sweet long-term relationship with Hiroto from her genin-team.

It wasn’t that she wanted Sakumo, specifically. She just wanted the second-hand excitement. That- what was it called again? ‘New Relationship Energy’ yes.

Sakumo wasn’t alone. But he was at the edge of his group. So when I lurched into his physical space, he managed to scoot sideways on his bench with all the grace of a ninja to make room for me to squeeze in next to him.

“Hel-lo, sexy.” I crooned, and booped him on the nose with my finger for good measure.

He laughed and allowed it. He must have been in a good mood to put up with drunk me. Like I said, charming I was not.

“Hello.” He told me, voice low, and his eyes were dancing. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“You looked like you were celebrating!” I started rambling in that way only drunk people manage to do, “So I just had to come over and congratulate you on whatever it is you’re celebrating.”

“And what if I’m not celebrating?” Sakumo said, and I had a moment of panic where I thought he might be married with a wife and a baby Kakashi back home after all. Chie hadn’t said anything, but Chie wasn’t clairvoyant. She knew basically as much about the guy as I did. Had I just utterly embarrassed myself by flirting with him?

Then I saw the twinkle in his eyes hadn’t left. He was still humoring me. I relaxed. “Well then, you should be celebrating! You can celebrate today as the day you met me.” I said this with all the seriousness of a prim and proper princess bestowing upon him the privilege of meeting me.

This. This was my drunk logic. If I’d remembered any of this conversation the next day, I would have first cringed at the princess act, then face-palmed at the excessive use of the word ‘celebrate’.

“Hm.” He grabbed my hand from where it had been playing with his hair ever since I booped him on the nose. I hadn’t realized I’d been doing it. Bad hand. He leaned in close enough I could feel his breath on my face. Damn. He was pretty, up close. “Don’t you think I need to know your name before we celebrate our meeting?”

“I’m Akari.” I breathed, mesmerized by him.

It was a very lucky thing I was blessed with good genes in this life and had kept up my usual morning jog of a fitness routine even after dropping anything and everything chakra-related. Because Sakumo surely didn’t take me to bed that night for my personality.

◦◦◦

Now before you get started on how I was messing with the true course of the plot, let me tell you, I _knew_ what this was and it wasn’t going to change anything. It was one wild night out with _the_ White Fang of Konoha that I could replay in my head for years to come. A nice little story to embellish just a tad for Chie’s amusement. After the one night was up, it wasn’t going to go anywhere. I knew that.

I couldn’t change things. One night with him wasn’t going to change things. He’d still go off on whatever mission and, with a little help from the self-righteous judging assholes in Konoha, convince himself he’d lost all his honor.

He’d still die in a horrifyingly tragic way. Kakashi would still be scarred for life, the event permanently influencing his character.

I kept on thinking it wouldn’t change things. Right up until it did.

◦◦◦

I woke up in the middle of the night alone in Sakumo’s bed, still slightly tipsy. Moonlight was coming through the window on the wall of the big traditional room in the estate house.

The bedding on his side was still warm. I got up to go in search of a glass of water. I’d be dying in the morning if I didn’t hydrate myself right then.

Wandering through the halls trying to find a kitchen made me suddenly thankful for my tiny one-bedroom apartment that I afforded with my pitiful civilian accountant salary. At least I never got lost in my own home.

Coming back from the kitchen, fresh glass of water in hand, I heard a noise across the hall from Sakumo’s room.

The door was open a crack, so I slid it the rest of the way, and took in Sakumo pacing around the room rocking a sleeping baby – most likely Kakashi – in his arms.

Well, there was one question answered. Sakumo probably had some kind of help – a nanny, or a caretaker – for whenever he went on missions. They must’ve been on Kakashi duty tonight while Sakumo was out and then left when Sakumo returned to the house.

I wondered if they had some special system. Like seals that lit up when Sakumo was home and the caretaker could leave. Or if it was as mundane as Sakumo going in to check on his son and telling the caretaker to call it a night.

Sakumo looked up at me. “Hey.” He said in a soft voice.

“Hey.” I didn’t approach. It felt like intruding. Here they were in a special family moment that I _knew_ they would have a limited supply of. And I was the outsider watching like a voyeur.

“I’ll come back to bed in a minute.”

“No hurry.” I said and turned around to give them some privacy.

◦◦◦

There _had_ been a conversation that night that I might have a little too optimistically misconstrued as ‘taking precautions’.

It went a little something like this:

“You’ve been to the hospital, right?” Sakumo questioned. “For your …” He pulled just far enough out of my embrace to wave vaguely at the space in front of my lower abdomen.

I thought he was asking about STDs, so I said, “Yes, I’m clean.”

He let out a breath, looking relieved. “Good. I’m clean too.”

So, here’s the thing about shinobi contraception. There’s a technique a person with a penis can do with their chakra that blocks conception from ever happening. There’s also a different technique a person with a uterus can do with their chakra that blocks conception from ever happening.

Do you remember when I said I was bad at chakra? The whole failed out of the Academy thing? Well, I was. Bad at chakra, that is.

I had plenty of it. It was just too slippery and it squeezed right out of whatever configuration I needed it to be in to execute a technique any time I tried to use it. I couldn’t get any traction. I could get it to move around inside of my body just fine, where it was limited by the constraints of my chakra pathways. That was useful for a couple of small tricks like maintaining body heat or signaling a sensor-type nin.

But actual techniques? Completely beyond me. I couldn’t even do the Academy clone jutsu well enough to pass to genin.

I definitely couldn’t do the uterus contraception jutsu.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’d been with men before. And each time I assumed they all used the penis contraception technique. They’d _better_ have because they said they did. I couldn’t actually tell if they did or didn’t because for a lot of common techniques like that, most nin ended up getting so good at them they don’t actually have to perform any handseals.

Either way, I’d gotten lucky so far and my luck was about to run out.

Other than the contraception jutsu, there _was_ a third kind of contraception. It was a hormone shot, the most similar kind of birth control to the ones available in my last life.

I’d later learn they gave these shots out standard to active-duty kunoichi. There were all kinds of good reasons why: an undercover seduction mission where you couldn’t use chakra, or having sex while chakra-exhausted.

Med-nin did not give the shot to civilians unless they asked for it. Because a lot of times civilians _wanted_ to get pregnant.

At the time of my last check-up I hadn’t realized such a shot existed. I didn’t ask for it. I got flustered enough being practically naked in an exam room with a virtual stranger asking me all kinds of invasive questions. Ok, I can admit, I don’t like doctors much. Sue me. Or, you know, _don’t_ , because of the lack of a judicial system or anything resembling a court room in this universe.

Remember when I said I kept a lot of good friends from my Academy days? Well I might have forgotten to mention that basically all my friends were shinobi.

There might have been some civilian equivalent to a condom in this world, but if there was I hadn’t heard of it because I only talked to shinobi anyways.

The sex education sucked too. It was basically just the flowers and the pollinators plus teaching the hand signs for the appropriate contraception jutsu.

I zoned out most of the Academy’s sex ed, because, hello! this was my second time though life. I already knew perfectly well how tab A fit into slot B.

I probably should have paid more attention. Or gotten the civilian version of the spiel once I realized I was never getting better with my chakra.

But back to the point. Sakumo clearly assumed I was either a) a kunoichi who’d had the shot or b) a civilian who asked for the shot instead of the correct answer c) a civilian who assumed _he_ was going to use a contraception jutsu. Like a responsible adult.

Ugh. Men who go around assuming it was the woman’s job to make sure there were no unexpected consequences. I’d had enough of them. Thank you very much.

◦◦◦

The sex was worth it. So worth it. Two. Words. Lightning chakra. He did this thing with his fingers. And then there were sparks. Literal sparks.

◦◦◦

A month later, I was puking into a toilet bowl. Skipping out on work for the third time that week.

I disliked missing work. It should have been weird but I actually enjoyed being an accountant within this backwards technological era.

It was a lot of math. And I had to do it all by hand since there were no supercomputers in the cloud. The numbers were familiar and relaxing in their predictability. If anybody ever tells you that technology is coming for the jobs, they’re right. At least in the sense that tech was coming for the low-stress paper pushing jobs that can be so easily automated away. This job was so low-stress compared to the career I had in my last life I almost laughed.

Instead, I thought I saw a seven and a division symbol lurking on the edges of my vision in the spots leftover from squeezing my eyes shut so tight as I hurled.

◦◦◦

Two months in and I had basically exhausted my capacity for denial. My cycle had always been regular. In both lives. I wondered if there was some spiritual component that carried over with your soul and influenced when you were ready for procreation. Could that make your body ovulate either regularly or irregularly?

I’d been vaguely spiritual before. In an agnostic ‘I’m not going to deny there’s a God, but I’m also not going to worship’ kind of way.

Then there’d been the whole dying and being reborn thing. I’ve mentioned that once or twice already, haven’t I? You’ve got the gist? Ok.

Well, I can’t remember anything from the in-between. The between-lives. Is there nothing in-between? Is there something so awe-inspiring that my mortal mind can’t comprehend it, so it represses those memories? Or is it like sleep? A dream that you definitely had but can’t quite remember because it’s not _reality._

Whatever. The only thing the second life had solidified in my perceptions of spirituality was definitively confirming the concept of a soul in some form or another.

When will my baby get a soul? Does a little piece of mine get mixed in with theirs?

Ah. The big questions. I’ll never truly know.

◦◦◦

Three months in and Chie started pounding on the door to my apartment.

“Akari! I know you’re in there.” She shouted and I silently lamented the days when ignoring all my friends just meant a string of unopened text messages.

“Hiroto misses you. So does Izumi. And Kenma.” Now she was lying. Hiroto acted like he missed me for Chie’s sake. Izumi and Kenma usually enjoyed having me around, but I doubted not seeing me for a few months meant they _actually_ missed me.

Still, _Chie_ missed me.

“Stop banging on the door. The neighbors will hear.” I twisted the deadbolt. The lock wasn’t enough to truly keep out a shinobi, but most people respected the boundary it represented symbolically.

“Why haven’t you been coming out with us?” Chie said as soon as she was across the threshold.

“Uh-“ My brain stalled out. I’d stopped denying to myself that I was pregnant. That didn’t mean I was ready to share that information. With Chie. With Sakumo. With anyone.

My ability to lie was as abundant as my ability to charm with my stunning personality. Which meant it was non-existent. Another reason I wouldn’t have made a good ninja.

Chie snapped her fingers once in front of my face to get me to stop staring at her shoes.

I was momentarily jealous. I’d never been able to snap. Was the ability to snap related to having good chakra control? Something with your finger dexterity, maybe? That could affect your ability to make hand signs, so it seemed plausible enough. Was that why she’d made it as a ninja and not me?

“Focus.” Chie drew my attention once more before herding me back into my own living room.

She made tea for me in my own kitchen, having been there many times before. She brought it back, and I warmed my hands around the cup.

“Do you-“ Chie’s voice had dropped registers into something a lot more vulnerable. “Do you not want to be friends anymore?”

“Shit! Chie! No!” I shouted almost immediately. I sloshed a bit of my tea onto my hand as I almost jolted with shock.

I blew on the tea rapidly cooling over my fingers. The tea wasn’t hot enough to burn, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant.

Shit. Chie had been there for me through all of my failed Academy exams. Through my trial-and-error at trying to find a civilian job to hold down with one-and-a half lifetimes worth of odd knowledge.

And now I was the one dropping out on her.

“You remember a few months ago?” I started.

“When you slept with the White Fang?” Of course Chie knew exactly what I was talking about. There was nothing else notable that happened. Chie and Hiroto and Izumi and Kenma and practically the whole village got to be ninja and do exciting missions.

The only exciting thing in my life was tax season.

“Yeah. The White Fang.” I repeated. It was weird to call him that now. I wasn’t sure when I promoted him to Sakumo in my mind. It might’ve been after I slept with him. It might’ve been after I realized I was pregnant with his unborn child.

“Ok?” Chie prompted.

“I think I’m pregnant with his kid.” I said all in a rush.

“What?!”

◦◦◦

At three months and two weeks we went to the Hospital for a check-up. We being Chie and me. I hadn’t told Sakumo yet.

Chie would have insisted we go sooner, but two weeks was as soon as we could get the appointment.

If my mom had still been around, she probably would’ve come too. But she’d passed a few years ago after an early heart attack. She’d been nearly sixty at the time.

I was sad she couldn’t live out her full life, but I’d also seen enough ninja die young by then, that I was happy she’d lived that long.

My dad had died young. He was a ninja. Apparently, I’d been two when he’d been killed on a mission. My baby brain didn’t have a lot of awareness through those years, so I didn’t really remember him.

The med-nin came in and I squeezed Chie’s hand.

She started asking all kinds of questions: have you been sleeping? how have you been eating? any back pain? any foot pain? any hip pain? no, no, no to all the pains and I knew I was getting off easy.

When I interrupted to ask if pregnancy was supposed to be giving me so much pain she laughed and said no, not necessarily, sometimes it was part of the body adjusting to a new normal, sometimes it meant there was something else wrong.

She’d palpitated and squeezed in a few places. Then her hands started glowing and she asked if we’d like to hear the heartbeat.

Of course we said yes.

◦◦◦

At four months, I really started showing. Like not even my baggiest clothes were hiding the fact that there was a bump under there.

I returned to the schedule of weekly meetups with those of my friends who were in the village. I laid off the alcohol. We kept going to the usual places. But I didn’t see Sakumo anywhere again. I knew where he lived. I could have gone to find him, but I didn’t.

Everyone took my news in stride. No one asked too many prying questions like: who’s the father?

I really had the best friends.

◦◦◦

When five months rolled around, I was freaking out. I was well past the half-way mark and I hadn’t thought about the logistics of having a baby.

Where were we supposed to live? I had a tiny one-bedroom apartment. There wasn’t enough room in there for a baby.

Did I even know how to take care of a baby? I’d been the youngest child last time around, and then I’d died too soon for kids. This time I was an only child.

I searched my memory for even one instance of changing a diaper and came up short.

◦◦◦

By six months, Chie had come up with a plan. Chie, Hiroto and I would all get a house together to split costs. Chie and Hiroto were also currently suffering through a tiny one-bedroom apartment. Their suffering was worse though because they shared it between the two of them.

“We’ve been meaning to move for a while now.” Is what Chie told me when she explained the plan. As ninja, they made more money than I did. But since they were out of the village and busy so much of the time, they’d never seriously worked on getting a new place.

The house would be at least four bedrooms. One for Chie and Hiroto. One for me. One for my baby. And one for any future kids Chie and Hiroto had.

I secretly thought Chie was using this plan to push Hiroto towards more commitment. I’d seen the looks Chie had sent to my belly. She’d definitely caught baby fever.

Whatever. I’d be getting free child-care whenever they were around so it was a win-win.

We went house hunting.

◦◦◦

The entire seventh month was filled with packing, and moving, and unpacking. We’d wanted to move fast before I got too big.

I kept my apartment for a whole month of overlap after we got the keys to the house.

I moved a few things every day, living half-between the two homes.

◦◦◦

At the start of the eighth month, we had a housewarming party. We invited Izumi and Kenma and everyone’s teams.

It was fun. People asked me when I was due and if I was excited to be a parent.

I told them I was, and I meant it. I could see a life like this stretch out in front of me. Chie and Hiroto and their future kids, me and my baby all living together like family.

◦◦◦

Then, finally, it was time and my water broke.

We went to the Hospital. I exercised my deep breathing.

I don’t know what counts as a ‘hard’ labor but I’m under the impression all labor should be considered ‘hard’ labor.

I pushed.

My baby arrived.

“It’s a boy.” The med-nin assisting in the delivery told me.

I thought I might start crying I was so happy in that moment.

Chie, who’d been in the room with me, holding my hand the whole way through stepped outside to tell Hiroto and the others the good news while the med-nin brought my baby boy up to my chest.

They wanted a name for the birth certificate.

“Uh-“ In all my prepping and planning I still hadn’t settled on one.

“Ok, we can skip that for now. We’ll come back to that once you’ve decided. What about the father’s name?” The med-nin asked, looking at me expectantly over the edge of a clip board.

I had no better answer for that one either. I wasn’t going to lie. But I couldn’t leave it blank. What if there was some weird Hatake-clan specific disease I needed to know about? My mothering instincts were kicking in strong.

I also didn’t want Sakumo to feel obligated to be in my son’s life. It’s why I still hadn’t told him yet.

Of course, that’s when Chie burst back through the doors, announcing, “Guess who I found in the halls straight back from a mission.”

Noticing the slightly dazed man following her, I shot Chie the best annoyed look I could manage through my exhaustion after literally birthing a human. “Chie.” I gritted out. “I haven’t told him.” She hadn’t been pestering me to do it, but she’d reminded me often enough after we’d moved in together that he deserved to at least know.

“Is that-“

“He.” I corrected.

Sakumo visibly swallowed. “Is he my son?”

And, yeah. The characteristic shock of white-grey hair really gave it away. At least he knew now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like a lot of self-inserts, the OC, Akari, is not directly based off of me, the author. But it's a lot of fun writing with a self-insert style.
> 
> I don't always understand how my brain works, but I'm pretty sure my thought process behind this was something like, 'there's so many self-inserts where they start off as babies, what if the OC wasn't the baby who made all the changes, but they had a baby that made a bunch of changes?'
> 
> The Naruto timeline is broken, so it doesn't really matter, but Akari & friends are in their mid-to-late twenties here, while I imagine Sakumo is ~30-31.
> 
> ~~If and when I write anything more for this~~ , expect a lot of time skips.  
>  ***edit* I wrote some more on this**
> 
> Also, one last warning: don't be like Akari. Practice safe sex, people. Communicate.


	2. Chapter 2

I think there’s some threshold at which ridiculous situations are supposed to stop seeming so ridiculous simply because you become immune to the absurdity.

For some unknown reason, I thought I’d already hit that bar after being reborn. So imagine my surprise, when the first thing Sakumo did after I nodded in the affirmative that, ‘yes, this is your son’, was nod back as if to steal himself, and then say:

“We should get married.” With all the solemnity of a monk.

I promptly started choking on my own spit. I was lucky I contained an instinctive bark of laughter. Because uhm, _excuse me?_

No. Just, no.

Was this what he did to the mother of his last kid? Talk about coming on too strong. No wonder that woman got the hell out of dodge. I was starting to think she had the right idea and I should follow her stellar example.

Sakumo passed me one of those tiny paper cups filled with water.

I sipped some, swishing the liquid around my mouth with my tongue. I looked up at his entirely serious expression. Then I gulped down the rest of the contents in one big swallow and crushed the cup in my hand.

“Why?” I managed to say without wheezing. “Why would you think we need to get married?”

“My son should benefit from all the advantages of carrying the Hatake name.” Sakumo said gravely.

I still didn’t see it. Couldn’t my son be a Hatake without _me_ having to take the Hatake name?

“Can’t you just, I don’t know, adopt him or something?”

Sakumo’s lips turned down into a frown, and he stood there silently for a long moment. Eventually he said, “Yes, I suppose that could work.”

◦◦◦

We named him Tetsuo.

I threw the name out in the air to try and pre-empt any naming attempts by Sakumo. I had limited trust in his creative abilities after seeing the firsthand results of his firstborn named after a scarecrow.

“Hatake Tetsuo.” The med-nin repeated and then spelled it aloud for confirmation.

“That’s alright, isn’t it?” I looked over at Sakumo. I realized there was some kind of agricultural naming theme the Hatake clan had going, but over my dead body would my baby be named after a tree. Or _dirt_.

My attempts at steamrolling any and all protests from his side fell entirely flat when he gave me a small indulging smile and said, “Of course, it is. Tetsuo is a wonderful name.”

It was officially on the birth certificate and everything.

◦◦◦

Tetsuo might have his father’s hair, but he had my eyes. Green.

It wasn’t a bright green. Not mint. Not jade. Not the new sprout of a sprig breaking through soil for the first time at the beginning of spring.

It was a deep green so dark it was almost black.

I’d thought all babies were supposed to be born with blue eyes, and then the true color came in later.

Maybe that was just a myth. Maybe that was just how it was in my old world, and things worked differently here. I didn’t know.

◦◦◦

Sakumo left with Chie to allow the rest of my visitors to come in two at a time, so as to not overwhelm me or the baby. They oohed. They aahed. Tetsuo had them all wrapped around his tiny little fingers with the grips of his cuteness.

I brought him home with me after we were released from the hospital.

Tetsuo slept. He ate. He cried. He slept a lot more. I got my first practical experience changing a diaper.

I was supposed to be resting and recovering, but I think Tetsuo got in _way_ more sleep than I did those first few days.

◦◦◦

Our first official outing in the village was less than a week after Tetsuo was born. I couldn’t help but dub the ceremony we were about to participate in a ‘shinobi baptism’ in my head. The real purpose was to officially acknowledge Tetsuo as a part of the Hatake clan.

My sandals clacked against the paving stones of the streets of the village as I carried Tetsuo in his sling.

I kept imagining Sakumo dunking Tetsuo in a pool of the blood of his enemies.

 _Ridiculous_ , I scoffed to myself. I didn’t know the details, but there was no way it would be like _that_. Right?

A group of ladies bagging vegetables at a vending stall to my left gave me side-eye as I passed them.

I tried to school my expression into something less horrified and more vaguely approximating what my face would have looked like if I’d gotten upwards of four hours of sleep.

◦◦◦

Sakumo answered the door with a toddling Kakashi clutching at the fabric covering Sakumo’s leg, hiding the bottom of his face behind his father. Oh, he’d gotten so _big_.

I don’t know what I’d expected. It’d been a full nine months since I’d last seen him. Kakashi and Tetsuo would have just shy of a sixteen month age gap between them. It made sense that Kakashi was bigger.

Somehow, after endless hours watching Tetsuo sleep, I’d forgotten babies came in any other size than adorably small.

“Hello, Kakashi.” I waved at him.

Kakashi stared up at me and Tetsuo, apparently found us lacking in suitable interest, turned around and started cruising down the hallway.

Sakumo gestured me in. “Welcome, please come inside.”

Kakashi turned a corner down at the end of the hall, and I finally pivoted my full attention back to Sakumo. He was wearing a formal traditional grey kimono, complete with the Hatake crest. And, damn, did he wear that _well_.

I glanced down at myself. I was underdressed.

I couldn’t run back home to change now, though. Today was supposed to be about Tetsuo, not me. I followed Sakumo into the house.

◦◦◦

You know, I really should’ve trusted my instincts about that whole ‘blood of my enemies’ vibe. Sure, the blood wasn’t collected fresh off a corpse or anything.

But there was most definitely _blood_ involved.

◦◦◦

Sakumo led me into an ornately decorated sitting room.

“Is he allowed to do that?” I watched in fascination as Kakashi climbed a chest of drawers I had a sneaking suspicion held fine porcelain dinnerware. I couldn’t guess what else you would store in this ostentatious space. Ceremonial weapons, maybe? I paled, hoping it was just some plates and cups after all.

“Don’t worry. He’s fine.” Sakumo said, from the other side of the room, in the most iconic execution of a laissez-faire parenting style I’d ever seen. He pulled a big-ass scroll down from its wall fixture.

I gaped at Sakumo in my best, ‘are you even seeing the same thing I’m seeing?’ impression. There wasn’t any way to stay focused on whatever Kakashi was or wasn’t doing though, because at that exact moment Tetsuo decided to wake up and demand my attention. He yanked on my hair with more strength than he ought to have in that itty-bitty little fist.

 _Ow_ , I mouthed. Note to self: wear hair up from now on.

Sakumo indicated the seat opposite him around the low dark-wood table in the center of the room. I sat down.

In one fluid, graceful flourish of a movement, Sakumo unrolled the scroll before us with a whoosh.

Names.

Many, many, names arranged in a way so as to depict the branching ancestors of the Hatake clan. All narrowing down, dwindling, generation after generation, until there were just two left. Sakumo and Kakashi.

“Kakashi.” Sakumo called, and when that didn’t immediately summon his wayward child, he put two fingers to his lips and whistled.

It worked.

I was astounded. In the only clumsy action I’d seen him do so far that fit his actual age, Kakashi fell over himself trying to hurry back to his father.

Sakumo picked Kakashi up and sat him in his lap.

It was at that point Sakumo pulled out a much smaller sealing scroll and released a ceremonial blade in a puff of smoke. I only had a short moment to feel relieved he kept the weapons sealed away before he sliced his palm over a bowl on the table and let several drops of blood drip down. Plink. Plink.

Well, ok then. I guess we were getting straight into it. No extra ceremonial fanfare needed beyond the trappings of the fancy clothes in a fancy room with a gilt-edged scroll and a wickedly sharp, engraved knife.

“Your hand, Akari-san.” Sakumo said, reaching his own across the table to grab mine (mind you: this was the hand that may or may not have still been bleeding, his other hand was the one holding the knife).

I must have been caught in a trance. That would explain my actions so much better than my own sheer stupidity.

It also could have been the sleep-deprivation from being up with Tetsuo at all hours of the night over the last several days that week.

Or maybe it was just the sense that, for the first time, I was _truly_ in another universe. Not just some wacky architecture, a new language, and questionably moral ethics included in the school curriculum. Not just new family, and new friends, all more involved in the military than I was used to.

This was the first time I got the sense that I was doing something _different_. Maybe I was intoxicated by the thrill and mystique of the ritual. Even chakra itself had never seemed so enchanting.

Whatever it was, I held out my hand for Sakumo to slice open my palm.

The cut was clean and swift. I didn’t feel it at first, but a second later it burned hot. My blood welled up in the wound.

Sakumo held our conjoined palms over the bowl and let them drip together. When the bowl collected more than a miniscule amount, he mixed the product of our veins together with his knife.

◦◦◦

This should be fairly common sense to most of you:

Never. Ever. Under any circumstance. Sign your name in blood.

Do I need to say it louder for those of you in the back?!

_Never. Ever. Under any circumstance. Sign your name in blood._

It’s not like I’d completely forgotten all my wits. But that invaluable nugget of advice was tucked in the way-way back storage centers of my mind. Lodged firmly between Macbeth’s cackling witches screeching ‘double, double toil and trouble,’ some notion of never eating the food the fae-folk offered you under the hill, and the good sense not to try and speak to ghosts with a ouija board.

It just didn’t compute in my mind that there should have been a warning bell flashing and a siren blaring: ‘don’t sign, don’t sign!’

Chakra was magic, yes. But not _that_ kind of magic.

◦◦◦

In the end, it didn’t matter.

Neither the scroll, nor the bloodied signatures of my and Tetsuo’s names drawn out, stroke by stroke, on the ancient paper needed to _actually be_ magic for it all to be a big mistake.

My mistake.

◦◦◦

Three days later, there was a knock on the door of the house I shared with Chie and Hiroto. They were both out. I double checked Tetsuo was settled in his crib before I went to get the door.

“Hello?” It was a chunin messenger.

“Hatake-sama.” The chunin bowed and held out a scroll. “I have a message for you.”

“I’m not Hatake-sama.” I said immediately, and only a little defensively.

His gaze was steely, direct, and uncompromising. “Hatake-sama, I have a message for you.” He repeated.

I wondered what kind of shit job being a messenger was for him to have developed that kind of attitude. Dealing with people all day must be the worst.

I took the scroll. I had a feeling he wouldn’t leave until I took it.

I read the message. It was a summons to the clan council.

◦◦◦

I did still have the good common sense to change out of my spit-up covered clothes. I pulled out my own formal kimono. It didn’t have the Hatake crest on it like Sakumo’s, but I doubted that would matter if they had already decided I was _Hatake-sama_.

On the walk over to the Hokage tower, instead of imagining bathing infants in puddles of blood, I tried to psych myself up. The clan council was a bunch of families that acted like an advisory board to the Hokage. No big deal.

They were basically a parent-teacher association for the Academy. They argued over the field trips, and what should be in the curriculum. Just your everyday wine-moms looking to gossip over which teachers weren’t showing enough care and support to their children.

It didn’t matter that the curriculum included twenty-seven ways to kill someone by severing the carotid. Or that the physical education was primarily based in hand-to-hand combat and throwing weapons.

They totally weren’t going to grill me. Definitely not ask me how I had the _nerve_ to consider myself worthy of the title Hatake-sama.

Yeah, I didn’t believe me, either.

I asked the neighbor’s elderly grandma if she minded watching Tetsuo for me while I was out. She looked at me a bit wide-eyed and askance, and I knew it was because I was wigging out and doing a pretty bad job of hiding it.

◦◦◦

When I walked into the meeting room, everyone looked up and stopped talking. I paused just inside the entrance way, unsure where I was supposed to go.

Every single clan head and/or representative was sitting behind a placard at a long curving table towards the back of the room.

Was this like a _summons_ summons? Were they interrogating me? Should I stand before them ready to respond to any and all questions? Or was I just supposed to sit and watch the proceedings? The scroll hadn’t said anything beyond the standard and uninformative wording: ‘your presence is required’.

I noticed an empty chair behind the placard reading, ‘Hatake’. Oh, thank god.

I moved to sit in it. Everyone’s eyes followed me as I made my way through the room.

The second my butt hit the seat the room erupted into cacophony.

◦◦◦

Through all the excited scream-shouts of various clan heads upset by a changing landscape in the balance of power, I managed to pick up on a few things:

First, Sakumo was out of the village on a mission today, hence why he could not attend this meeting.

Second, whenever Sakumo was usually out on a mission, there was no representative for the Hatake clan on the clan council. This meant that the Hatake clan abstained from any and all votes taken during those meetings.

Third, Sakumo had filed the updated clan registry into the Hokage tower’s official records.

Fourth, when Sakumo adopted Tetsuo into the Hatake clan (keeping him from being a ‘bastard’ child without me having to marry Sakumo) he had also adopted _me_ into the Hatake clan as the mother of his child.

Fifth, as the oldest and highest ranking female representative of the Hatake clan, I’d become some kind of dowager clan matriarch.

◦◦◦

I was most upset about that last one. Dowagers were supposed to be old. I wasn’t _old_. I wasn’t even _thirty_.


	3. Chapter 3

I mean, if you wanted to go and get all _technical_ about it, I might’ve been considered over thirty.

Those baby years shouldn’t count. I couldn’t even remember them, for fuck’s sake! All the kid years stuck in classrooms below the drinking age shouldn’t count either. How could I be over thirty when I’d never inhabited a 30+ year old body?

I drummed my fingertips against the tabletop in front of me. At least give me some kind of conversion factor…

Like, … half your age plus seven? No, no, that one was for the appropriateness of an age gap. Which, … yeah, Sakumo and I still met that no matter how you counted.

I put my elbow on the table, tilted my head to the right and leaned my cheek into my hand. Hmm, if you multiplied the baby years by a third. Kiddie years by a half. Preteen by two-thirds. (I’d gotten really good at mental math at my job.)

Drum-roll…

Damn. I still came out older than my current body. I guess that was accurate enough though, living through a brutalistic totalitarian dictatorship did tend to age a person.

I paused to look around at where the Uchiha representative, for some unfathomable reason, was defiantly staring down the Hyuuga representative and defending my right to sit on the council.

The Hyuuga was blah-blah, blahing in an uppity tone about ‘appropriate levels of experience and qualifications’. And how everyone else on the council had _years_ of wisdom. Oh, wasn’t it such an insult to the entire establishment of the council itself that somebody who wasn’t even in a clan last week… well, I’ll spare you the details.

The Uchiha’s defensive argument came off weirdly libertarian. Like ‘of course it’s idiotic that’s she’s sitting there! But who are we to _dictate_ to a clan that they make smart informed choices in their representation? No, it is their inviolable right to be dumb idiots.’ Geez, what a compliment.

I had plenty of time to kill.

I started scratching at a groove in the natural grain of the table’s wood. Let’s just run the calculations again. If I didn’t count the baby years at all, lowered the conversion factors like so, and added a multiplier for the teen years – there – it came out to my body’s exact age.

Ah, so nice when it works out like that. Ok then, where were we, back to the clan council –

Wait, what’s that? Did you say something? You think I’m fudging calculations here?

Don’t come at me like that, bro. I’m not claiming to do science. This isn’t a peer-review.

And even if it was, my sample size is one. Me. That’s the sum total of people I know who’ve been reincarnated. Therefore I am 100 percent representative of the population.

And I say, I am not over thirty. Capiche?

_Definitely not pushing fifty_. I mumbled quietly to myself.

◦◦◦

Now, if you’re harboring any illusions about me harnessing my newfound political power for some kind of revolution out of a military-state, let me break them for you.

The clan council was less like a PTA and more like a city council. Except instead of elected positions, all the seats were inherited.

Yes, that’s right, this was _local governance_. At its finest.

Have you ever actually had to sit through a city council meeting? You know the ones where they spend endless amounts of time examining all the excruciating minutiae of day-to-day issues?

No? Me neither. And after gaining that experience, I can say without a doubt, it’s a straight-up: would not recommend, one star review. And only because the app doesn’t let me give zero stars.

When everyone finally came to the collective conclusion that I wouldn’t be going anywhere and calmed down, the clerk read the first item on the agenda.

A bumbling civilian man in ill-fitting clothes with the build of a construction worker stood from his chair and crossed the room carrying posters.

Posters that he proceeded to put on a _stand_. To swap out by hand when he needed the next set of bullet points, design drawings, charts, and/or graphs. Because there was no PowerPoint here. Not even a slide projector.

He started talking about a proposal for building a high-density apartment complex close to the center of the village.

That was the moment I realized that in my panic about being interrogated, I hadn’t brought anything to entertain myself with. No books. No notetaking supplies with which I could pretend to look engaged and secretly doodle.

I leaned back in my chair and started playing with the hangnail on my left thumb. Twisting it to the point of pain. It still didn’t adequately distract me from all the fine-detailed ins and outs of the sewage line modifications and electrical re-wiring necessary for project completion.

Twenty minutes later, I breathed out a sigh of relief that it was finally over. We could vote and move on to the next topic.

Oh, how wrong I was.

The council opened the floor for discussion.

_Three hours_. That’s how long they stretched out the Q&A. They were a bunch of NIMBYs, the lot of them.

Now, I could appreciate the fact that we had electricity and indoor plumbing. I thanked my lucky stars every day that I hadn’t been reborn into the middle ages with chamber pots and outhouses. But there was a limit, ok? And three hours was two hours past my limit.

I was going to _kill_ Sakumo for this.

“All in favor, say aye and raise your hand.” The clerk finally instructed.

“Aye.” I chanted in chorus with about half the room because fuck anybody who wasn’t in favor of affordable housing.

“All opposed, say nay and raise your hand.”

I glanced around. The Hyuuga, Akimichi, and the Inuzuka all had hands raised. Hands that went down again before I could finish cataloguing the rest of my opposition.

“18 ayes to 17 nays, with 6 abstaining. The motion passes.”

For any math whizzes out there, that’s a difference of one vote. A deciding vote. My vote.

The Uchiha looked smug in their victory and I wondered if I was missing some political undercurrent here. No, I thought, in my naivety, I bet they just always looked smug when they won. There was no way _housing_ could be such a contentious issue.

◦◦◦

Tetsuo was crying, and Chie was bouncing him up and down trying to shush him when I finally got home. She must’ve taken over babysitting from our neighbor.

She noticed me after hearing the door click shut behind me. “I tried everything, Akari! I don’t know what he wants!”

I rushed forward and scooped him up out of Chie’s arms. He quieted to a sniffle-level. “You want your Mama? Is that it?” He reached one hand out to me and giggled. “Oh, yes you do!” I cooed.

“Aww,” Chie glowed in wonder at the power of youth, leaning over my shoulder to watch as Tetsuo squeezed and released, squeezed and released around my finger. “He recognizes you! That’s so amazing.”

I bounced him once. He giggled some more. “I’m pretty sure all kids learn to recognize their parents at some point. It’s not that amazing.” I was lying. It was pretty amazing.

But I needed to put a stop to her wonder before she started channeling Gai-like vibes.

I had been hearing Chie and Hiroto go at it through the walls of our house. Baby-making noises. Every night this week. Gag. Hearing about those exploits second-hand was so much more preferable to Chie giving a live performance to the audience in residence. The audience namely being me since Tetsuo would never remember this.

Witnessing how many diapers I’d changed should have been some illusion-shattering moment about the reality of motherhood to Chie. If anything, Chie’s baby-fever had only gotten worse after Tetsuo had been born.

“You know you don’t need to rush and have kids just because I did?” I said bluntly, in a re-direction that was very on-brand with my typical non-existent subtlety.

“I know.” Chie said, meeting my seriousness with her own quiet assuredness. She fiddled her hands in front of her for a second, twisting the pointer finger of her left into the grip of her right before resolutely placing them to her sides. “But I passed the expiration time to get my kunoichi shot renewed. And if I get pregnant in the next two months, then our kids will be in the same class at the Academy!” Her face absolutely lit up at the possibility.

It was a nice dream, the idea of our kids our growing up together. I’d entertained the thought at first too.

Now, though - oh for the love of all that was holy and righteous in the world, I pleaded to whoever might be listening, even if it was only my own spiritual subconscious, please - we did not need another baby in this household. One baby was the exact right number.

I wasn’t going to say any of that to Chie, though. There was absolutely zero chance that _I_ was going to be the one to crush Chie’s dreams of a baby.

Then something clicked –

“What’s a kunoichi shot?” My face scrunched up in confusion.

“Are you serious, Akari?” Chie frowned, mystified, her baby-train totally derailed. “I thought you just didn’t get one because of all the negative side-effects.”

After explaining the basics, Chie started listing off all the known potential side-effects. Blood-clots. Stroke. Heart attack. Complete loss of fertility.

They were horrifying.

I still wanted one.

That afternoon, I convinced Chie to be my moral support and accompany me to the hospital to ask for the shot.

◦◦◦

The next day, I marched over to the Hatake estate with an agenda. I was going to whoop Sakumo’s ass for leaving me to the clutches of the clan council. I swung my arms with the unwavering energy of someone completely convinced by their cause and tried to ignore how the bicep on my right shoulder was still kind of sore from the shot.

I was prepared. I had a speech prepped and memorized. I was keyed up, in the exact right mood to rain down fury on the man who hath scorned my womanly rights.

Chie was babysitting Tetsuo again back at the house. So I wouldn’t have to worry about raised voices making the baby cry.

I stood in front of the door to the Hatake estate house. I didn’t bang on it. I had some level of common courtesy; I wasn’t a heathen. I knocked.

Loudly.

Then the door opened.

It wasn’t Sakumo.

◦◦◦

Seriously, why did Sakumo have to be such a perfectionist workaholic? How many missions could one man reasonably take? They couldn’t _all_ have needed him specifically. Missing one mission wouldn’t have changed _that_ much in the course of things.

◦◦◦

Jiraiya stood in the doorway. The winds in my figurative sails dispersed and the sails deflated.

“Hello.” Jiraiya said with a leering grin, while leaning into the doorframe.

My first thought was: geez, he’s tall, as I craned my neck up at him. I think it was the hair that did it. There had to be six inches of extra fluff up there and he was already a pretty big dude.

My second thought was: he’s _hot_. Which felt creepy in how entirely not-creepy it was. It felt like I should be meeting an old man, but here he was. _Young_. Around my age (my very decidedly below-thirty age) plus or minus a few years. He probably did _well_ with that sleazebag grin of his.

(I don’t have a type. Competent, capable, men with a silver fox vibe are definitely not my type.)

Then Jiraiya’s eyes dropped to my chest and –

Nope. Never mind. I take it back. Opinion recanted, retracted, the whole shebang. He was not hot in the slightest. Ugh. Lecherous arrogance really takes away from the appeal. Good looks don’t carry you very far if your personality is like _that_.

– what was he even looking at, anyways? My cleavage was barely a c-cup, and that was after the pregnancy hormones got their groove on boosting my boob size.

“Where’s Sakumo?” I asked. I crossed my arms in front of me in an attempt to look more menacing. Realizing how the motion propped the shelf of my breasts up and together, I dropped it.

Jiraiya’s eyes snapped back to my face and his spine straightened out of its slouch. “You must be Akari, huh?”

Could this man get any taller? His serious posture must have added at least another inch to his height.

I tried peering around him, but Jiraiya managed to take up the entire doorframe of space. “Is Sakumo here or not?” I was starting to get impatient.

“Sakumo this, Sakumo that. Everybody needs Sakumo these days. I’m sure whatever it is that you need Sakumo for, I could give it to you just as good.” He raised one of his eyebrows suggestively, but the hard way he held his body told me he didn’t actually mean it.

“You’ll let me slap you across the face instead of Sakumo? Take one for the team?” I crossed my arms again, no longer caring what it did to my boobs and tapped my foot up and down.

Jiraiya just let out a booming laugh and grinned in response. “Oh, I like you. No wonder you’ve got Sakumo whipped.”

A voice called out. “Sensei? Who’s at the door?” I spied a hint of yellow. Was that a pint-sized Namikaze Minato back there somewhere?

I (mostly) forgot about Jiraiya with my new immediate need to squish Minato’s cheeks. I brushed into the doorway and Jiraiya let me pass without so much as touching me.

It was probably rude to push inside uninvited, but it was practically my house now too, right? Seeing as how I was now Hatake-sama. If Sakumo had a problem with it, he should have _actually been here_ to voice his complaint.

◦◦◦

Kakashi had no designated nanny. Sakumo got all of his child-care help from D-rank babysitting missions that were mostly taken by genin teams.

Pre-teen Minato excitedly explained this to me as Kakashi kept trying to pull on his arm to turn his attention back to the puzzle taking up space in front of the couch. Each of Minato’s teammates took shifts over the course of the multiple days that Sakumo could potentially be gone and it was currently Minato’s turn to watch Kakashi.

“Puzzle.” Kakashi barked in his high-pitched toddler voice, before tugging once more on Minato’s sleeve, more firmly this time.

Minato looked down at him. “Be patient. We have a guest.”

I wasn’t exactly the definition of a guest, but that wasn’t super important right now.

Kakashi turned back around and sat behind the puzzle block contraption – one of those ones with pegs and circles that you have to move around to re-order them into ascending sizes – but he didn’t move to play with it again. He kept watching Minato talk to me.

Oh sure, Tetsuo and I weren’t enough to warrant Kakashi’s scrutiny, but bring Minato over and all of a sudden he’s asking to play and needs every ounce of Minato’s attention.

“How do you know the Hatake clan, Akari-san?” Minato asked.

Right. Minato didn’t know who I was. Even after I introduced myself. Even though, apparently, Jiraiya had correctly guessed the answer.

I was not opening that can of worms today. I deflected. “How about we play with Kakashi? He’s waited a while to show you his finished puzzle, don’t you think?”

I also didn’t really want to leave Kakashi alone for too long. It felt like he was going to transform into a cyclone of mass mayhem as soon as I turned my back on him for longer than a second. I didn’t care what Sakumo had to say about parenting, children required supervision.

Minato, like the generally good-natured pre-teen-version of the man I was led to believe he later becomes, took the change in stride and allowed Kakashi to lead us in his games.

◦◦◦

A word of advice: never confuse your ability to do math well with your actual intelligence. It doesn’t help you in the long run. Because then you end up in situations like this.

Getting shown up at peg-block challenges by a toddler.

Kakashi started disassembling the latest in a series of variations on the puzzle with such speed I practically couldn’t see the blur of his hands.

Minato called out the time for his most recent triumph. “A minute and six seconds. That beats your four minutes and twelve seconds, Akari-san.” He smiled apologetically at me. It seemed sincere, but I doubted _he_ had ever lost to Kakashi at this game.

For a solid minute after my stunning and irrevocably complete defeat, my brain stalled over the horrifying thought that this might be a preview of what raising Tetsuo will be like – raising a child who is one hundred percent smarter than I was.

A child who could get up to more mischief and more shenanigans than I knew how to police. A child that might be _good_ at chakra, unlike yours truly.

I was in a pickle, because it’s not like I could wish that Tetsuo would aspire to middling mediocrity. I couldn’t wish for him to _not_ be a genius. Who wanted that for their kid? Tell me, honestly.

And if he was a child with middling mediocrity level of skills? What kind of life would that be? Living in the shadow of his genius big brother?

We’d already seen that story play out. That was the Uchiha story, not the Hatake story.

◦◦◦

I hugged Tetsuo to my chest with an extra reverential care when I went home that night. I didn’t want him to grow up. Why did time even have to pass? Why he couldn’t he stay this small forever?

He just blinked at me, completely oblivious to my internal crisis.

◦◦◦

There are these mystical creatures called _people skills_. I’ve seen them in the wild. I’ve managed to capture a few of them. I have not yet managed to tame them.

Persons other than I have managed to wrangle them into submission through the use of kiss-assery, and the devious method of schmoozing.

I do not proclaim to be their master. I do not even attempt to herd them into the pen that my other skills inhabit. To cage them into living beside the leaders of my pack: _risk aversion_ , and _low inhibitions_.

_Risk aversion_ and _low inhibitions_ don’t get along so great. They fight a lot. Sometimes I have to separate them. It’s almost a pointless effort because the barred fence between their pens doesn’t keep them from snapping at each other.

_People skills_ are mystical beasts not so much because of their difficulty in the wrangling, but because my tools of submission are not appropriately suited to the task. I own the lasso of distractions. I wear the oxymoronically-named spurs of bluntness. I ride my irreverent lack of respect for authority proudly into the hunt.

My imperfect _people skill_ handling is meager at best. But it’s the best that I have. I make do.

It’s only been in this current life that I have started to tame my singular little cub of a _people skill_. It’s called _tolerance_. My little cubling likes to go by other names. Cutesy little nicknames. _empathy_. _patience_. _understanding_.

My little cub gets on my last nerve sometimes. They rub up against me right when I’m at my most agitated with someone else and _purr_. They tell me, with those huge puppy eyes of theirs, ‘this is a person too, don’t you want to try and give them the benefit of the doubt?’

Oh, it was so much easier before I started taming _tolerance_. Then I could have just been flat-out mad at Sakumo.

Somehow, impossibly, Sakumo was worse than I was at handling little cubling _people skills_. I learned this when I finally managed to corner him in his home after three straight back-to-back missions.

“Can you just repeat that for me?” I raised my hand to pinch my brow. I didn’t know why I did it. It seemed like the sort of thing that you should do to show someone that you were completely exasperated with them.

We weren’t firing on all cylinders in terms of communication. That much was obvious. I had maybe missed a key assumption about what adoption really meant in terms of clan politics. He had maybe missed my complete misunderstanding of the adoption process.

The pinch kind of hurt. Some soothing circular rubs across my temple would have been so much better at alleviating stress in this situation.

“I thought adoption was what you were asking for.” Sakumo said.

…

Oh, no he didn’t.

He did not just say _I asked for it_.

I was about to start some serious finger-wagging up in here.

…

I took a deep breath in. I let it out. I looked at him.

He was clueless. This big idiot of a man. Clearly uncertain about what he had even said that upset me.

I took another deep breath, holding it until I started to feel that tingling in my face and extremities that accompanied light-headedness. Only then did I let it out. I sucked in three breaths in quick succession. Let the oxygen return to my blood stream. Good grief, I was going to hyperventilate with anger.

That shouldn’t even be a thing. Anger was supposed to make you punch something! Smash a mirror or throw some furniture around! Granted, I think the only piece of furniture in that room that I had the strength to pick up and throw well enough to actually smash would have been the vase in the corner.

I didn’t want to smash the vase. There was always weird shit that collected at the bottom of vases. People threw junk in there that should never see the light of day.

“Why.” I said stone cold.

“You suggested the adoption.”

“And when did I suggest you adopt _me_?!”

Sakumo’s face pulled down into even more confusion. “Adopting Tetsuo without adopting _you_ would have meant forfeiting all of your parental rights in his upbringing. You never indicated that you were interested in giving up your rights as his mother.”

I clenched my fist. Damn him. Damn this man for bringing fucking logic into the equation. He wasn’t supposed to make sense! He was supposed to be passively idiotic for me to project my anger all over.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I couldn’t blame him. Well, I _could_ blame him. But I couldn’t blame him for _everything_.

I _had_ brought up adoption. And I _hadn’t_ looked into the laws or any of the fine-print on what an adoption would actually mean.

“Can you undo it?” That was the most important part. Oh my god, I did not want to sit through another clan council meeting. “Can you undo the adoption?”

“All clan adoptions are legally binding. The only way for you to lose affiliation with the Hatake is to be adopted by another clan.”

Right. Like there was a chance in hell of that happening.

“Isn’t this the best way? Tetsuo keeps the Hatake name. You keep your parental rights. _And_ you keep the right to marry someone else.” Sakumo looked at me all hope on a resolute face. “If you want to marry someone else, that is.” Sakumo continued, as if I’d marry _him_ after this stunt.

I sighed, pinching my brow again. I had the sinking feeling that the brow-pinching may become a habit where Sakumo was concerned, I’d certainly be seeing him often enough from now on.

I switched over to the soothing circles across my temples. I was right. It was way more relaxing than brow-pinching.

If I’d just married him in the first place we wouldn’t have been in this mess.

I still would have been required at the clan council meetings, though. So there was that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone wondering if I have an update schedule for this, thank you for your belief that I have a regular writing schedule, but unfortunately I do not. If history is any indication updates will be ~once a month. I do have an idea of the ending for this, so hopefully we will get there *eventually*.
> 
> The adoption plot point was loosely inspired by a cross between the actual practice of adult adoption in Japan (so-called 'son-in-law adoption') and same-sex adult adoptions that have been used to achieve the legal protections of family status for partners in countries where same-sex marriage is not legal. There's a whole bunch of Wikipedia articles if you're interested. Notably, in the US until the late 20th century, courts did not consider the crime of incest an issue in adult adoptions as the law only prohibited relationships between people related by blood.
> 
> Konoha in this AU has a similar cultural allowance for adoption (including adult adoptions) in order to continue clan names and pass down clan techniques. Konoha also has a similarly lax stance on incest and would not view any relationship between Sakumo and Akari as incest since they are not blood related.
> 
> The 'half your age plus seven' calculations do work out. And I spent *way* too long remembering basic algebra to figure out if I had to pin down Akari's age to make it work. The problem basically boils down to two inequalities with three variables defining two bounding planes in three dimensional space. Take your pick of the infinite solutions for Sakumo and Akari's ages.
> 
> That's all folks. Hope you enjoyed reading.


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